The best way to generate website traffic is to first create great content. But after you have spent time creating that valuable content then how are you supposed to drive traffic to that content? If it feels like no one is reading your material then it is understandable to feel frustrated and want to quit but think long term about your growth. Too often bloggers will spend a few weeks or even days then give up if large success hasn’t happened. So, I guess the second step after creating great content is to not quit when you realize that driving traffic growth is harder than you initially though.
Ok, so you haven’t quit yet…..what are you supposed to do now? Analyze your content strategy and your throughput to create traffic. If you don’t have a strategy and action plan in place create one (anything to start will do…) and start tracking your time and your results! The goal here is to just incrementally get better and have consistently in your output and process to start seeing consistent results. When you start seeing consistency change one aspect of your strategy and action plan then see what happens. Create a mind map of your web traffic funnel. The top of your funnel could be a social media site or another webpage that has the users that would be interested in your website content. Use a tool like Lucid Chart to create a diagram of where your traffic starts, the actions you take to get traffic to you, and where your reader ends up. You can add notes in between each high level box with metrics on your current efforts. This way you can figure out where in your funnel your bottle neck is or where there is a break in your funnel that is metaphorically leaking your reader traffic. If you can get to the point where you can predict the result of any action you take then you will be more likely to be successful in driving web traffic as you will know the activity required to get to your end goal. Ultimately, if you see your traffic is not increasing it is possible that you are focusing on the wrong topic or trying to drive readers from the wrong sources which you can always course correct.
If you don’t have any sources for web traffic start creating them through backlinks. Backlinks are posts to complementary companies or websites that you can redirect traffic from. Google will pickup those links and increase the trust in your website. Set a goal like creating 5 backlinks a day and overtime you will increase your passive traffic. That said, if you stop this process your traffic will die down so you must continue your activity over a long period of time.
Further, set goals to write at least one blog article and refine one article a day. If you are not sustaining traffic it is possible that your content is commoditized or just isn’t solving the problem that your reader has. Therefore, never stop improving your content.
Tools to help with content promotion
Create social media profiles like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, or Linked. Add friends to those profiles and consistently post your content. You will be able to see through analysts which profiles are generating the most traffic. When you find one that works the best focus your attention promoting there.
Another way to increase traffic is through SEO. Find keywords that are searched most often and update your blog content to contain those keywords. Google Keyword Planner can help in this regard. In the past keyword packing into your posts was a sure way to increase your ranking on a Google search. More recently LSI (Latent semantic indexing) keywords are becoming more important. Google’s algorithm uses them to help determine content quality and relevance to the search term. Take a look at this website called LSIGraph to help you identify the appropriate keywords to use!
A great way to promote your content is through synergies with other bloggers.
Tailwind tribes allows you to cross promote within a specific niche on Pintrest. According to Shopify the average purchase directed from Pintrest is over $50 and often people will research products on Pintrest before searching them. Therefore, creating synergies through Pintrest is a winning strategy for revenue generation.
Snip.ly is another tool that can help you promote content. You can do this by first navigating to the site and promote content that isn’t yours. After you will create a call to action as a soft sell to your blog article. That way you’re helping someone out while at the same time promoting your own content. The more value you add to others the better your synergistic promotional strategy will become.
Finally, Google Alerts are a good way to keep up to date with content that is available for your to reference. You can also post on blog comments and further ask questions to develop relationships with other bloggers. The more you can expand you network and solidify yourself as a credible subject matter expert the greater your blog traffic will become.
Generating traffic is not an overnight process but the more traffic you incrementally get the more it will compound over time and snowball into something great.
At the end of the day you have to reverse engineer what your readers value and the differentiated value that you have as a subject matter expert.
Here’s some other ideas that will increase traffic for your website:
- Advertise your website by getting guaranteed clicks with Google
- Paid Search (research paid channels)
- Social Media Advertising – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.
- Answer questions on Quora
- Increase engagement by speaking directly to those in your community
- Internally link your website together
- Review analytics and focus on topics that you know have high interest
- Repackage and re-purpose content
Take a look at these other articles!